In July a webinar took place with the title “What constitutes success for CLTS? – Measuring community outcomes and behavior change”. The recordings of this webinar are now available as sound files (podcasts) and as videos. In the webinar, experts working with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Building Demand for Sanitation” Programme shared their insights on this topic.

The webinar had a chat show format where, following a panel interview, the audience had the chance to interact with the panelists. The sound-only mp3 files should be useful for people without access to Youtube or for those who would like to listen to the webinar recordings on their mobile phones while commuting or travelling for example.

Links to all audio files and additional readings are available on the SuSanA discussion forum on page 2 of the discussion thread

Playlist to all the webinar videos on Youtube (all playlists of SuSanA are available here)

Information about the BDS portfolio of the BMGF is available here in a recent portfolio update and overview report (June 2015)

The webinar had an innovative format. It was run in a “chat show” format – with a set of interview questions to the panel and without powerpoint presentations. It also included four “break-out rooms” where participants could speak to each other in smaller groups, therefore allowing for more interactions.

Some general conclusions from the webinar:

1. ODF (open defecation free) may be better suited for motivating communities than measuring success and is not a good metric for comparing communities due to its binary nature;
2. Low overall success rates suggest we are missing an opportunity to better target CLTS to specific communities and consider alternate sanitation strategies where CLTS is not appropriate;
3. We need better data and understanding of how to successfully change long-term social norms.

The webinar was organized under the Knowledge Management initiative of the Building Demand for Sanitation (BDS) program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It was organized by Euforic Services, the SuSanA secretariat and the Stockholm Environment Institute. It was aiming to address these questions: “It is startling that there seems to be no consensus about what constitutes success for CLTS programmes. Is 30% an acceptable success rate? How can these rates be optimized? and; what should be our response to communities that do not become defecation free?”

One response to “Recordings from webinar with BMGF grantees: “What constitutes success for CLTS? – Measuring community outcomes and behavior change””

How can these rates be optimized? and; what should be our response to communities that do not become defecation free?” –

This is an important question considering that CLTS as an approach is one that has received a more world wide acceptance by many sectors including national/central governments and private sector than many other approaches. The missed opportunity is that we are more focused on elimination of open defecation as a practice than the aspect of behaviour change which would be more long term. Context is key, I do not think that there exist an approach that applies to all types of communities even in a single country. the next step is for practitioners to embrace the challenge and device ways to focus the approach to its core principle of changing behaviours

bringing discussions such as these to practitioners is good way to deal with the issue. Another way is to encourage sharing of experiences.

for communities that do not stop open defecation, a solution would be to understand the motivation for the current practices. could it be the triggering process applied the drivers of ‘shame’ and ‘disgust’ in a negative way that made the communities recoil back instead of being a trigger for change? could the CLTS have been applied as ‘lets-build-toilets” than lets embrace different practices? I think there is much to be learned in this practice. For example in pastoralist communities in Kenya who are nomadic in nature the elimination of open defecation did not work out well because they are in constant motion. Some NGOs have tried introducing the mobile toilets by use of same temporary materials used to construct the houses. the success of this is still to be determined…..

Diana You can look at the role of MFIs in Kenya in Sanitation here. I was part of the team that did the evaluation of a program called WaterCredit supported by MasterCard Foundation. rwsnforum7.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/f...335_gupta_sanjay.pdf If you need more detail, you can write to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need Ja […]

Hi Everyone, This is turning out be a very informative discussion. Hopefully, someone from the corporate sector can share their insights. I agree with Nitya- for incentivisation, we need to reward companies for their behavior rather than adopt a "shame" approach. Our experience with corporates is that many of them are not well versed with what sani […]

Showers use a lot of water, which is drained off. When warm water is used, also the heat is lost unless a heat recovery system has been installed. To combat water and heat wastage the Upfallshower has been developed. The Upfallshower recycles 90% of the water, thus saving 90% of the water and energy requirements. The recycled water is filtered and UV desinfe […]

In my experience, if you are planning a biogas then perhaps using the same for cooking is fine but electricity is a more complicated process and not very suitable for IDP set up. THese require regular maintenance. So even if you are able to procure one, getting timely services and repair will be tough. You will usually not find these services locally.

Hi all, my name is Sanjay K Gupta and I work at Skat Switzerland. The outreach of companies for incentivizing sanitation, particular in rural sanitation is limited, unless the company having its CSR fund particularly focuses on rural segment of the population. Many of the companies themselves need orientation on sanitation and then developing a CSR plan that […]